Hard to label this Apple

No matter who twiddles the knobs, itÂ’s FionaÂ’s show

Like Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,
Fiona Apple’s Extraordinary
Machine comes with a juicy backstory
about the big, bad recording industry. Wilco, as everyone knows,
pleaded artistic integrity when its label charged that the
band’s recordings weren’t sufficiently commercial;
bolstered by tons of press, Internet buzz, and a big-screen
documentary-cum-hagiography, Wilco prevailed. When YHF was
eventually released in its original form by a division of the very
label that spurned it, the CD became Wilco’s biggest success,
both commercially and critically. Apple’s story has a murkier
moral. When her label refused to approve the tracks that
she’d recorded with longtime producer Jon Brion, the singer,
who hadn’t released an album in six years, fell into one of
her famous funks and simply gave up. It wasn’t until an
anonymous insider leaked the recordings on the Internet that the
hype machine kicked into gear. The bootleg CD garnered gushing
reviews, and Apple’s fans demanded its release on the Web
site freefiona.com while deluging Sony’s offices with foam
apples. But instead of pulling a Wilco and sticking it to the Man,
Apple claimed that she wasn’t any happier with the Brion
sessions than Sony was. She dutifully returned to the studio with
Dr. Dre’s main man, Mike Elizondo, and started over. One of the many charms of Apple’s
second album, the magnificent When the
Pawn . . .,was the contrast between
Brion’s hyperdecorative production style and Apple’s
decidedly visceral approach: Surrounded by the elaborate whimsy of
Brion’s arrangements, Apple seemed more dangerous, more alien
somehow, like a scorpion in a Fabergé egg. Music snobs who
dismissed her on the basis of the triple-platinum Tidal, the
embarrassingly sleazy video that accompanied her first hit single,
the onstage meltdowns, and the incoherent rant at the MTV Video
Music Awards were compelled, after Brion’s massive cred
injection, to give her a second chance, enough time to notice the
venomous sweetness of her voice, her jazz-singer phrasing, her
ingenious melodic variations, and her savagely elegant piano playing.
The masses, alas, were underwhelmed: When
the Pawn . . . sold only a third as
many copies as its predecessor. In its current form, Extraordinary Machine includes
nine re-recordings by Elizondo and co-producer Brian Kehew, one new
track, and two recordings from Brion’s original production,
which serve as aural bookends. Compared with its previous
incarnation, the album sounds somewhat more commercial, but the
differences are less pronounced than one might expect. The
arrangements still boast baroque, Brionesque flourishes —
woodwinds, string sections, tack pianos, pump organs, Optigans,
chamberlins, marimbas — but they’re heavier and more
hypnotic, less cluttered and crazy-sounding. If Brion’s
production was ecstasy, Elizondo’s is opium. Whereas Brion
played almost all of the instruments besides piano, Elizondo
enlisted a crack ensemble of session musicians, including the
inestimable Abe Laboriel Jr. and the Roots’ Ahmir
“?uestlove” Thompson on drums, whose sinuous rhythms
impart a groove that cunningly underscores Apple’s soulful
voice. Check out the lurching, lovelorn “O’
Sailor” and the louche, logorrheic “Not About
Love,” in which Apple’s quicksilver tempo shifts seem
not only intuitive but downright funky. You could dither endlessly about the
producers’ relative merits, but you’d be missing the
point: No matter who twiddles the knobs, it’s Fiona’s
show. For proof, look no further than the searing ballad
“Parting Gift,” which requires nothing more than
Apple’s scorched-sugar contralto and her alternately fierce
and delicate piano accompaniment, wherein lazy arpeggios give way
to great clomping bass-clef chords and a bittersweet blues evolves
into a molar-rattling requiem. All by herself, and with or without
her label’s imprimatur, Apple is weirder than Wilco will ever
be.